This Woman's Family Lost 300+ Pounds Thanks To This Meal-Delivery Service

In 2003, my husband and I opened a restaurant. We served burgers, fries, and buffalo wings. The next year, we opened a 30-flavor ice cream parlor right next door. Being a restaurant owner is a stressful and demanding way of life—and when you're working up to 15 hours per day, it's easy to live on the fries and ice cream you serve. I can't think of many nights when I wouldn't walk out the door without a peanut butter cup ice cream cone in hand. And exercise wasn't happening. I gained 30 pounds during those first three years we had the restaurants, and in the last two, I gained an additional 60.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Meanwhile, food was a social binder for me. It was the reason friends and family got together. My husband and I have three sons, and together, we'd eat chicken and waffles for breakfast, enchiladas for lunch, and prime rib for dinner. I love to bake, so pound cake, peach cobbler, and bread pudding were part of my normal repertoire. Together, we all gained weight.

After we sold the restaurants in 2008, I tried multiple ways to lose weight, including fad diets and weight-loss pills. I'd lose a few pounds here or there, only to gain them back, and then some. And while I had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes back in 1998, I had long been able to control it with medication. In 2014, however, with my weight at 285 pounds, I was put on insulin. The daily injections should have been my wake-up call, but it still wasn’t enough for me to make the changes needed. I started going to the gym, but basically I would walk a mile or two and then go home and binge eat.

The Change

Sandra Hardeman

In 2016, I considered gastric bypass surgery. Then, my youngest son, who was 10 at the time, said to me, "Mommy, what's going to happen when you lose weight and we are still fat?"

I could not believe I let myself and my kids get so out of control. I realized at that moment that losing weight was not just about how I looked, but the health and future of both myself and my entire family. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I didn't even know if I could do it, but I knew that I had to try for and with my family.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Together, my husband, sons, and I applied to appear on a Lifetime show called This Time Next Year that chronicles people as they make life-altering changes over the course of 12 months. We were selected! Host Cat Deeley met our family as we made a personal pledge for change in front of a live audience. The docu-series would follow us for a year, but would not provide any assistance; it really was up to us to lose the weight.

The Food

Sandra Hardeman

In December 2016, when the show started filming, we went and saw a nutritionist as a family, and realized that our cooking and eating habits were completely unaligned with our goals. We cleared out the pantry together, switched to small plates, and got rid of our southern sweetened tea—but we knew we needed to do more.

We looked at several different food programs that would help model what and how much we should eat. We ended up choosing Diet-to-Go (DTG), which is a meal service that prepares healthy, fresh-made meals for pick up, and is geared toward whole families. Its five-week meal rotation allowed each of us to select our own foods, based on a menu of lean meats, fruits and vegetables, and healthy grains like brown rice. The treats that were on the menu (like Belgian waffles) were low in carbs and sugar.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

To get started with DTG, you enter your current weight, gender, age, and how much weight you're looking to lose on the site, and it builds a meal plan for you. Mine contained 1,500 calories per day.

At the start, my family and I got all of our meals from DTG. We also worked with our dietitian and learned to read food labels, determine portion sizes, and understand calories and carbs. Because DTG had nutritional labels on all of the meals, I was able to piece all of that knowledge together to really understand what my body needed.

Learn how to read a nutrition label:

With very little deviation from DTG in the first six months, I lost weight every single week. The weight loss was slow—one or two pounds—but I never gained, which felt incredible. After six months, we stopped ordering breakfast because it was the easiest meal for us to start making on our own. To replace the pancakes that DTG would give us, we went to the supermarket and read labels to find a comparable mix that was low in sugar and carbs.

By December 2017, a year after starting DTG, we were cooking all of our meals on our own, often together.

The Workouts

Sandra Hardeman

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

I started working out in January of 2017, about a month into my weight-loss journey. I worked with a fitness trainer at One Life Fitness, a local gym that was easy for me to get to after work, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. My first workout had me sweating so profusely... and then my trainer told me "that was the warm up!"

Going forward, I worked out with my trainer once per week for one hour. In the beginning, I had to learn the basics—using a roller, bands, balance ball, and rope were foreign to me. My husband and sons also started working with a trainer at the same gym and continued to do so throughout the year we lost weight. We all had different workout schedules, but we did a few family sessions together. After three months of personal training, I added a 45-minute high-intensity interval class to my weekly routine.

On the days I didn't work out, I walked, making sure to hit between five and 10 miles per week. I also got a treadmill desk to keep me moving. On the weekends, my family and I would walk the track at the local middle school, or a nearby two-mile trail.

After about five months of dieting and working out consistently, I had lost 38 pounds.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Today, I still train about once per week, and go to workout classes two to three times per week. If I can’t make it to the gym, I exercise at home with my stability ball, weights, and punching bag.

Sticking With It

Sandra Hardeman

While being on the show was definitely motivating, what really helped me stay the course was the fact that we were losing weight as a family. Love was the driving force behind everything. I love my family with all my heart, and I wanted nothing more than to change the trajectory of their lives. I don't want my kids to ever have to endure an insulin needle or to miss out on the beauty of life because of their weight.

The Reward

Sandra Hardeman

My family and I are healthier and happier than ever before—as a family, we lost over 350 pounds!

I am working to reach my goal weight of 170 pounds, but I'm down four sizes and 60 pounds. I am also insulin-free and have normal blood sugar levels for the first time in more than a decade. My husband, Steve, lost 90 pounds. My oldest son, Steven, lost 104. My middle son, Sterling, lost 17. And my youngest son, Seth, lost 40.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

After a year of filming the show, we decided to treat every year like it’s This Time Next Year. We even set some new goals. Among them, we plan to hike the Appalachian Trail and visit a dude ranch.

Sandra's Number-One Tip

Sandra Hardeman

Find a reason to lose weight that truly motivates you. For me, it was the collective health of my family. Everything I did, and continue to do, goes back to my son's question, "Mommy, what's going to happen when you lose weight and we are still fat?" All of us have our own reasons, ones that go deeper than wanting to see a certain number on the scale. Figure out what that reason is for you, and don't let go.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Women's Health participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.